3 Frequently asked Questions

Some things just can't be covered in the normal documentation. And
apart from that, the documentation is unfortunately the last place
your average user would look for a solution to his/her problems. That's
why FAQs have a very long tradition I don't want to break with Gnometoaster.
So here it is: the Gnometoaster FAQ, assembled using bits from emails
and postings to the mailing list and some of my genuine fantasy.

3.1 Files added to the cd's filesystem don't show up in the filesystem
  editor, I'm getting something on the lines of ``Can't create symlink:
  xxxx'' on the console instead

You have to configure the ``Cdfs Area'' in Gnometoaster's preferences
setup to point to a valid, writeable directory used exclusively by
Gnometoaster. Please follow the installation and setup instructions
of the manual to get Gnometoaster running.

3.2 DAE (Digital Audio extraction) doesn't work with Gnometoaster or
  if I drag an audio track from a drive's track overview down to the
  preview player it doesn't change from ``Play''to ``Stop Playing''\label{dae probs}

There may be many reasons for this. First of all, check that your cdrom
drives are setup properly. If they are, please make sure the corresponding
device special files have the appropriate permissions. If you're using
the scsi generic interface to read out audio tracks, make sure cdda2wav
has the correct permissions to access the sg interface. For some types
of cds (notably cd-plus cds) you need a recent version of cdda2wav
in order to be able to digitally extract audio tracks. As of this
time, Gnometoaster is being developed based on version 1.9 of Jrg
Schilling's cd recording tools.

3.3 When writing mp3 or wav files, I get a lot of silence at the end
  of the track or I get tracks that consist of nothing but silence

This generally means that either you don't have mpg123 installed on
your system (future versions of Gnometoaster will have to check for
this and issue a warning) or (which is more probable) the mp3 file
you tried to record was corrupt in some way. Although mpg123 tries
hard to play defective mp3s, sometimes it will get out of sync and
stop playing entirely. 

3.4 When copying audio tracks from other cds, I get nothing but silence
  or the tracks seem to be incomplete

see section \ref{dae probs} about possible reasons for this behavior.

3.5 I can't write multisession discs

Please follow the instructions of the Gnometoaster manual.

3.6 When trying to import the last session of a multisession disc, no
  files are being displayed in Gnometoaster's Filesystem editor

Please check the mountpoint of your cd writer as entered in Gnometoaster's
drive setup. Also make sure that a corresponding entry in /etc/fstab
is present and, if you're running Gnometoaster as a non-root user,
the writer is user-mountable (the ``user'' option is present in the
corresponding line of /etc/fstab).

3.7 Multisession discs written by Gnometoaster can't be read by drives
  other than my cd writer

Make sure you check the ``fixate'' switch in Gnometoaster's recording
panel. When writing multisession discs, this switch should be checked
permanently.

3.8 Gnometoaster exits a few seconds after startup, stating something
  like ``aborted.'' on the commandline

This has been a known bug for quite some time which has been fixed
in recent releases of Gnometoaster. If you're still experiencing this
bug, please upgrade to a more recent version of Gnometoaster. If you
don't want to upgrade, one possible way to get rid of this problem
is to recompile gnometoaster with multithreading disabled: just pass
--without-pthreads to the ./configure script and recompile gnometoaster.

3.9 Gnometoaster exits right after startup

This has also been a known bug for quite some time which has been fixed
in recent releases. If you don't want to upgrade, you can get rid
of it by simply deleting the ~/.gtoaster.dircache file in your home
directory.

3.10 How do I uninstall Gnometoaster

This is a question very specific to the way you installed Gnometoaster.
If you've installed Gnometoaster from a ready-made package, use your
distribution's package manager to uninstall Gnometoaster. If you installed
Gnometoaster from sourcecode, please reextract the source archive,
change into it and type ``./configure'' and then ``make uninstall''
as root.

3.11 Compiling Gnometoaster gives me a whole lot of error messages

You probably don't have one or more of the required support libraries
installed on your system. Note that the source distribution of Gnometoaster
not only needs all the libraries like libgtk or libgnomeui32 etc.
but also their header files.In most distributions those can be found
in packages with the usual name and ``-dev'' or ``-devel'' appended.
Older versions of Gnometoaster didn't compile on Linux 2.0.x systems.
Please upgrade to a more recent version of Gnometoaster. The way to
make your older version of Gnometoaster compile on those systems would
be to replace all occurrences of #include <linux/cdrom.h> by #include
<linux/ucdrom.h> in the source code. As mentioned, recent versions
of Gnometoaster are taking care of this automatically. 

3.12 Gnometoaster's idea of the filesystem size of my data cd is wrong

Please remove the -a option from the mkisofs call in Gnometoaster's
preferences setup. Recent mkisofs versions don't support this option
any more, issuing a warning instead which voids Gnometoaster's tracksize
calculation. Recent versions of Gnometoaster have their default configuration
changed to address this problem. Upgrading from an older version will
give you the opportunity to automatically fix this issue. Just answer
the upgrade questions occurring when first running the new version
of Gnometoaster with yes. There is also a slight possibility that
you have a very old version of mkisofs installed on your system which
doesn't yet support the -print-size option. In this case there is
no other way than updating mkisofs.

3.13 Gnometoaster is recording/playing some mp3 files at a very high pitch

This has been a problem with older versions of Gnometoaster and the
way they invoked mpg123. Please add both the --stereo and the -r 44100
option to the mpg123 call in Gnometoaster's filetype registry or upgrade
to a more recent version of Gnometoaster.

3.14 When I add large directories/my home directory to Gnometoaster's
  CD-Filesystem my Computer seems to work endlessly with vast harddrive
  activity

Gnometoaster in it's current state of development is unapt to make
large harddrive backups. The problem you're facing is caused by symbolic
links. Gnometoaster is using symbolic links internally to build up
the filesystem tree of your cd. Because of that, no ``real'' symbolic
links can be recorded on cd. So Gnometoaster has to get rid of them
by resolving them into normal directories and files. While this is
not a problem for files (they simply get written twice), it definitely
can be for directories. Take, for example, a typical gnome user's
home directory. it contains a directory .gnome-desktop with links
to the home directory itself, all cdrom and disk drives of the system
and maybe even a link back to the root directory. As Gnometoaster
has to resolve all those links into normal directories, each containing
all data referenced by the link, it should be easy to imagine how
long this can take on a large system. I'm working on this problem
and the next release of Gnometoaster should finally get rid of this
issue but until then, please don't use Gnometoaster for harddisk backups.

3.15 I can't hear anything when dragging an audio file or a track to the
  preview player but recording works perfectly well

There's most probably some problem with your system's or Gnometoaster's
audio configuration. Please enter Gnometoaster's preferences setup
and change the audio output driver from ``Enlightenment sound daemon''
to ``Open Sound System''. ESD mode only works if the enlightenment
sound daemon is running in the background but it is a very nice way
of accessing your sound card as it allows for sharing it with other
applications.

in case you still can't hear anything, please check your system's sound
setup (e.g. if the kernel sound module is being loaded correctly)
and make sure that no other applications are blocking your sound hardware.

3.16 Gnometoaster keeps recording a 2 seconds pregap between tracks which
  is inappropriate for the type of content I'm recording

Please check the ``Disc-at-once'' option in Gnometoaster's recording
panel and make sure you have cdrdao installed and setup properly.

3.17 I can record CDRs in disc-at-once mode but I can't in track-at-once
  mode or vice versa

DAO and TAO writing are performed using different backends. While cdrecord
is being used for TAO recording, cdrdao is being used in DAO mode.
Both programs have different hardware requirements so please make
sure your system meets the requirements of the backend you're trying
to use and especially that the backend is installed and setup correctly
on your system (e.g. with access to the scsi generic interface).

3.18 I'm new to Linux and this whole cd recording stuff. I can't get Gnometoaster
  to do anything

Please read the documentation from the very beginning. I've tried very
hard to explain all the implications of cd writing with linux/other
unix systems but this won't help you unless you read it. 

3.19 DAE is very slow within Gnometoaster but I can read out audio cds
  much more quickly using other applications

There are two modes of addressing a cdrom drive on unix/linux systems:
using the scsi interface and using cooked ioctl() calls to the cdrom's
device special file. Gnometoaster is using the latter by default cause
this is increasing the probability that DAE will work on a system
at all. However, some cdrom drives are much faster reading out audio
data using the scsi generic interface. You can make Gnometoaster do
so by replacing the $device variable by $scsiid in the cdda2wav call
of Gnometoaster's ``Audio settings''.

3.20 Although files are showing up in the filesystem editor, the fillstate
  display is still showing 0 MB and when I try to record a cd Gnometoaster
  states that there are no tracks to be recorded

To understand this behavior you have to know that the data track part
of your cd is represented by a data track within Gnometoaster's tracklist.
This track is called ``Gnometoaster Internal Filesystem'' and if it
doesn't exist in the tracklist, your data track will not be taken
into account when writing the cd. To add you filesystem to the tracklist,
drag it from ``Internal structures'' down into the tracklist. You'll
find your fillstate display the tracksize of your Filesystem immediately.
Note that the Gnometoaster internal filesystem is being added to the
tracklist automatically when the Filesystem is being edited and there
are no other tracks in the tracklist yet. In all other cases, you
have to add the Filesystem track manually.

3.21 Why do I have to scan through the whole internet to meet all the
  requirements of Gnometoaster ?

The answer is as simple as sad. All backend applications Gnometoaster
is using are under continuous development. Putting them all together
on an ftp server or something would require someone maintaining this
server on a full-time basis. This is beyond the possibilities of a
voluntary project like Gnometoaster. 

3.22 I wan't to install Gnometoaster on distribution xxx. Which of the
  packages on your Homepage should I get ?

This does indeed depend on your distribution. First of all, check if
there's a package explicitly made for your distribution. If there
isn't, check if your distribution is RedHat compatible or does at
least use RedHat's package manager. In this case it should be secure
to just download and install a redhat package from Gnometoaster's
homepage (Distributions that should work with RedHat packages include
RedHat itself, Linux Mandrake, SuSE Linux). If you are using Debian
or a Debian-based distribution (which includes Corel Linux and Stormix)
please use the Debian package instead. 

Of course, there's always the option of compiling Gnometoaster yourself
from the source package. This will ensure that you're using the most
recent version of Gnometoaster as well as that there isn't some sort
of binary incompatibility to the libraries installed on your system.
Please follow the instructions in this manual on how to install the
source distribution of Gnometoaster.

3.23 When clicking the ``Record'' button, Gnometoaster is pausing for
  a few seconds to give the user a chance to abort the recording process.
  How can I stop the recording process in case I actually need to ?

by sending a sigterm to gnometoaster (use your favorite xterm and type
killall gtoaster). Gnometoaster doesn't yet provide the ability to
terminate a pending recording process. I will implement this functionality
in a future release, though.

3.24 Why does Gnometoaster display 746MB of recording space on my CDR
  while the medium I'm using can hold only 650MB of data ?

Gnometoaster is calculating the sizes of all tracks as if they were
audio tracks. There are various modes in which a track can be recorded
to a CDR. The most important ones are audio mode and MODE1 data mode.
The latter reserves extra space per sector to store additional checksums
which is necessary to maintain the high level of data security needed
when storing binary data. As a result, less data can be stored to
a CDR in data mode than in audio mode. This makes for the difference
between 746MB and 650MB. 

3.25 How can I write to 80 Min. blanks with Gnometoaster. The application
  doesn't seem to recognize those blanks

No Problem! Although Gnometoaster doesn't currently adapt it's fillstate
display to to increased storage size of 80 min. blanks Gnometoaster
is still perfectly capable of using all space available on such blanks.
You can even record more than the usual 650MB of data to a normal
blank using Gnometoaster. How much more depends on the type of blank
you're using.

3.26 Drag and drop doesn't work from any KDE application (like kfm, konqueror,
  ...)

This is a known issue I'll address in the future. Unfortunately, drag
and drop is handled differently by KDE applications than it is by
Gtk/Gnome and most other applications like StarOffice, Netscape, ...

3.27 I tried to record a file or a filesystem but I only see some sort
  of warning in the recording terminal and the recording process doesn't
  even start

Please read this warning carefully. Note that by definition, compact
discs cannot hold any tracks smaller than ~ 4secs. of playing time.
cdrdao will refuse to record such tracks while cdrecord will pad them
to a bigger size. Future versions of Gnometoaster will address this
problem in a more sane way so this is something for the ``known bugs''
chapter.

3.28 Gnometoaster doesn't update it's progress dialogs when writing a
  cd or precaching a file/track

This is a known problem. It has been fixed for writing cds in the threaded
version of Gnometoaster. The precaching routines have yet to be adapted.
However, if you have, for some reason, pthreads support disabled on
your system, there's hardly a chance to make those progress boxes
update correctly for you. You should upgrade to a newer kernel/libc
combination that supports multithreading.

3.29 I tried to copy a CD-Plus CD today but Gnometoaster seemed to be
  unable to read it's data track

Gnometoaster doesn't support reading the data track of a CD-Plus CD
as of now. This functionality will be implemented in one of the next
versions.

3.30 Gnometoaster seems to be notoriously trying to open a network connection
  to some server. Does it have some sort of built-in Trojan transmitting
  my data to some remote database ?

Don't worry, it's just the CDDB routine trying to identify the cds
in your cdrom drives. 

3.31 How can I turn off CDDB lookups ?

The current version of Gnometoaster doesn't provide a switch to disable
cddb lookups. Instead, I'd suggest to set your localhost as the cddb
server Gnometoaster should attempt to use. Doing so will make Gnometoaster
try to establish a connection to your localhost's cddb port every
20 seconds which will of course fail but this won't do you any harm.

3.32 I tried to burn a CD(R/RW) with a few files on it.Once I had hit
  record, Gnometoaster went through all the files and recorded them
  onto the disc. However, I cannot mount the result. What went wrong ?

You probably added your files to the Track Editor rather than the File
Editor with the result that Gnometoaster created a CD containing several
data tracks each being a copy of one of the files you added (just
as if those files had been track images). Add your files to the Filesystem
Editor and your CDs will work just fine.

3.33 Gnometoaster is just running fine on my root account but it only
  causes a bunch of error messages if run from my normal user account
  or it doesn't display any tracks for my cdrom drives. Aren't Linux
  users supposed to do their daily work as a normal user ?

True. However, cdrecord and cdda2wav require their controlling user
to have access privileges to the scsi bus which are not granted to
normal users by default within any sane setup. However, you can give
your users explicit access to your cd writer(s) and your cdrom drives
by setting the access privileges of the /dev/sgx (where x depends
on the bus nmbr. and target id of your writer) and the devices controlling
your cdrom. Probably the best way to do this is to create a new group
``cdwriter'' using the addgroup command, add all users that should
be allowed to burn cds to that group by editing the /etc/groups file
and then typing chown :cdwriter /dev/sgx and chmod g+rw /dev/sgx.
Make sure to also give access to the cdrom device file associated
with your writer and any cdrom drive you want to use. On most systems
you just have to add your desired users to the existing cdrom group
in /etc/groups.

Of course, if security is a non-issue on your system, you could also
just grant access to those devices to anybody by typing chmod a+rw
/dev/whatever or set cdrecord and cdda2wav +suid root by typing chmod
a+s /usr/bin/cdrecord and chmod a+s /usr/bin/cdda2wav. Again, don't
forget to grant access to your cdrom device special files. Otherwise,
Gnometoaster won't be able to read out the TOC of your discs and just
display nothing in your drive's tracklist.

Setting the Gnometoaster binary +suid root is explicitly deprecated
!!! This will enable any user on your system to read out *any* files
not only by using some obscure commandline program but by using a
comfortable filemanager! On most setups this is definitely not what
you would want!.

3.34 Why does Gnometoaster need cdrdao for Disc-at-once recording and
  doesn't use cdrecord's dao functionality instead ?

I'd love to support disc-at-once writing with cdrecord cause this would
simplify the procedure of setting up a system for Gnometoaster immensely
and cdrecord has a much larger base of supported recorders but cdrecord
can't write any tracks or files on-the-fly when in DAO mode. This
doesn't fit at all into Gnometoaster's conception where everything
can be done on-the-fly if your hardware is fast enough. Some day there
may be support for writing on-the-fly in disc-at-once mode with cdrecord.
Once this sort of functionality is there, I'll support it.

3.35 I've got this very bad problem and I simply can't work with Gnometoaster
  cause it's completely unusable

This sort of bug probably won't have a chance to last long. Just take
a look at the Gnometoaster Homepage and check for a new version or
a bugfix/patch. Sometimes it may not be visible clearly enough which
is the most current version, esp. if you're downloading a prepackaged
version of Gnometoaster so please make absolutely sure that you're
using the most current version available.

4 References

If you still have problems using Gnometoaster, feel free to write to
A.Eckleder@bigfoot.com or share your problems with the members of
the Gnometoaster mailing list (gnometoaster@lists.kando.hu). 

For other references see http://gnometoaster.rulez.org
